Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

14 Responses to “10 Monday AM Reads”

As they stopped payments to the pension fund and demanded yet another round of cuts for the workers; the CEO upped his own annual pay, and top executives got raises of 35-80%. This as a reward for the “stellar” work of increasing company debt from 670 million to about a billion. Wonder how much of that debt increase came from juicy fees to the private equity company owners, and other types of control frauds. The story of Hostess is once again showing how defenseless workers are against greedy incompetent management, and predatory capitalists hiding under rules of “private” equity. Who are the creditors and why don’t they fight this?

“…Business owners and investors are rapidly maneuvering to shield themselves from the prospect of higher taxes next year, a strategy that is sending ripples across Wall Street and broad areas of the economy… Take Steve Wynn, the casino magnate, who has been a vocal critic of higher tax rates. He and his fellow shareholders in Wynn Resorts, the company announced, will collect a special dividend of $750 million on Tuesday, a payout timed to take advantage of current rates. Experts estimated that taking the payout this year instead of next could save Mr. Wynn, who owns a sizable stake in the company, more than $20 million…”

As a civil engineer I agree entirely that the “Black Swans” are becoming an excuse for bad risk management.

There have been predicted NYC-NJ flooding maps for various Hurricane Categories available for a number of years. I have seen nothing in the news so far to show that these maps were wrong. I was tracking Accuweather in the week before Sandy came on shore. It was very clear that this would have the impact of a Category 1 or 2 hurricane wit hthe associated flooding per the maps. The tides in the NYC-NJ area are very complex with the peak tides in the Battery-Sany Hook area offset several hours from the peak tides in the Long Island Sound. So there was a virtual guarantee that Sandy would have its 8′-10′ storm surge coincide with a peak high tide somewhere in the NYC metropolitan area. This was well-known in the technical community 48 hours before Sandy hit. It just happened to occur at The Battery-Sandy Hook area which saved many areas in the Bronx-Connecticut-west shore of Long Island from flooding since the peak surge went over there at low tide. There was no excuse for government, companies, and individuals to have failed in doing whatever they could have to have minimized damage dues to storm surge in the two-three days before Sandy hit.

You can see similar ignoring well-known risks at the Fukisham nuclear power plant. The iconic artwork from Japn for much of the world is the Great Wave which shows a massive wave with Kanagawa Japn in the background – destructive tsunamis are part of Japanese history almost everywhere along their coast line. The faults off of northern Japan are known to be subduction faults with Magnitude 8-9 earthquakes and resulting tsunamis. so why would they put their generators in the basement and the spent fuel rods that needed cooling on the third floor instead of the other way around?

A true Black Swan event was the dust bowl as most people, including most of the scientists, simply did not understand the dynamics of climate,hydrology, and plants in the Great Plains. Part of that was the data set was very limited to just a handful of decades without a good theory to use to interpret it. As a result, we got a major disaste that was only predicted by a handful of people unlike some of the recent so-called Black Swan natural disaster events.

It will interesting to see if there is a surge in capital gains taxes this year that will put a dent in the federal deficit. According to the supply side theorists, lower capital gains taxes are supposed to encourage investing and make people not be concerned about taxes in decisions to sell, so that tax collections will rise. Maybe the fiscal cliff will actually make this occur for once.

“The shadow banking system – blamed for aggravating the financial crisis – grew to a new high of $67 trillion globally last year, a top regulatory group said, calling for tighter control of the sector. …

… The FSB said shadow banking around the world more than doubled to $62 trillion in the five years to 2007, and had grown to $67 trillion in 2011 – more than the total economic output of all the countries in the study. … America had the largest shadow banking system, said the FSB, with assets of $23 trillion in 2011, followed by the euro area with $22 trillion and the United Kingdom at $9 trillion. … The U.S. share of the global shadow banking system has declined in recent years, the FSB said, while the shares of the United Kingdom and the euro area have increased. “

isnt the rush to exit all sort of investments, going to lead to lower growth? of course they may also exiting because of the slow falling fiscal bomb. after all , a lot of businesses will cut staffing which will lower economic output because there are fewer customers. and that will also lower tax revenue. will will likely more than offset what little increase there will be from the mass exit before the fiscal bomb hits

besides its not like those same ‘investors’ have done much for the economy. since the tax rates were cut, there was never a big increase in jobs. in fact for the entire time they have been in place, job growth have been the weakest ever recorded

I just want to say how grateful I am to all the folks rushing to the exits because the tax boogeyman is coming: I’m acquiring some excellent names along with select shorts.

I grant this is not as amusing as the fools signing various online secession petitions (over 300,000 after all the untraceable and bogus names were redacted) but it has been far more profitable thus far.

Again, my hearty thanks; please continue.

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About Barry Ritholtz

Ritholtz has been observing capital markets with a critical eye for 20 years. With a background in math & sciences and a law school degree, he is not your typical Wall St. persona. He left Law for Finance, working as a trader, researcher and strategist before graduating to asset managementRead More...

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